"If they want me to be here for a long time, I would love to be here for a long time…. They've expressed the same interest. You just let Andy [MacPhail] and Baltimore and my agents do their work."

Jones hit .277/.335/.457 in 519 plate appearances for the O's in 2009, his second full season as a starter. If the two sides were to discuss an extension for the outfielder, Franklin Gutierrez's four-year, $20.5MM contract with Seattle might be a suitable comparison. Jones has displayed a little more offensive pop than Gutierrez, but not the same superb level of defense.

With two years and 139 days of service time, Jones barely missed out on achieving Super Two status this season, losing a tiebreaker to Mike Fontenot. Like certain other players with less than three years of service time, Jones had his contract renewed by his club. A renewal, as opposed to a signing, can sometimes be a quiet way for a pre-arbitration player to protest the salary the club assigns him. Schmuck and Zrebiec discuss the renewal process in their article, and in a second piece by Schmuck, noting that Jones will make $465K in 2010.

Yep, one of the worst in M’s history. But I guess now the M’s still have Bedard, and if they hadn’t made this trade they wouldn’t have acquired Guti. Look at it as you will, I still think it was a bad trade, but I think it turned out better over time.

I disagree. You can’t wait 5 years on that (Erik Bedard for Chris Tillman, Adam Jones, George Sherill (Josh Bell), and Kameron Mackilio) trade…I can’t see anybody taking the Mariners side on this one ever.

Even assuming all of those players Baltimore got washes out starting tomorrow, they already got an All-Star season out of Sherrill and Jones, and, will at minimum still get cheap service time for up to 6 or so years in Tillman, Jones, Micholio, and Bell (via Sherrill). The Os just gave up a single player. The only way this tips in Seattle’s direction is if Bedard puts his health problems behind him and pitches enough years of above-average ball to offset that kind of roster leverage, but that’s not terribly realistic. Is it?